As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
However over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears mirror an emerging climate in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with the East could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though without the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, having fled the country because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to America for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies deemed vital to national security. The deals have left some investors concerned that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. US courts have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
